Technical Field
The present invention relates to a fuel cell such as a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC), particularly to a fuel cell stack that has a cooling fluid channel formed between stacked single cells.
Related Art
One of such fuel cell stacks is described in, for example, Patent Document 1 where it is referred to as a fuel cell. The fuel cell described in Patent Document 1 is composed of a stacked plurality of fuel cells. Each of the fuel cells includes a hydrogen electrode with an uneven cross-section and an oxygen electrode including an drain layer with an uneven cross-section, which are disposed on opposite sides of an MEA (membrane electrode assembly), and further includes flat plate separators disposed on the outer sides of the hydrogen electrode and the oxygen electrodes to form a hydrogen channel and an oxygen channel in the respective interfaces with the electrodes. Furthermore, the fuel cell includes a coolant channel portion at the side of the oxygen electrode.
The coolant channel portion includes two flat plate separators and a pre-compressed plate interposed between them, wherein a coolant channel is formed between the two flat plate separators. The pre-compressed plate has a corrugated cross-sectional shape so as to be elastically deformable in the thickness direction (stacking direction of the stack). The pre-compressed plate distributes a load that is locally generated due to a shape error of the components of the fuel cell so as to apply a uniform load to each component.